Suffer Well
by Night's Fang
Summary: Michael takes over, but Adam doesn't make it easy. Written for the comment fic prompt: Supernatural, any vessel, The exploitation and intimidation of tenants by landlords.


**Title:** Suffer Well  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Supernatural  
><strong>Author:<strong> Night's Fang (Inked Insanity)  
><strong>CharacterPairings:** Adam + Michael  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Michael takes over, but Adam doesn't make it easy.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG-13  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 1111  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Uh it's dark?  
><strong>AN:** Written for the comment_fic prompt: Supernatural, any vessel, The exploitation and intimidation of tenants by landlords.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I do not own Supernatural, Kripke and the CW do. I'm just playing around in their sandbox.

* * *

><p>Adam is not an easy vessel to use.<p>

It takes a lifetime in his own heaven, for Michael to get the barest utterance of the word _yes_ out of his lips. Adam is resilient, strong, unwavering. He doesn't break under Raphael's hands or even under Michael's own. It takes the mention of Kate Milligan for the boy to give. He spits out his assent in all righteous fury. Even then, there is a hint of something dark in his eyes promising revenge, promising Michael that he _will_ regret this as Michael fills in inside him, spreading his grace through Adam's nerves and making Adam's body _his_. The boy is definitely a Winchester, even if he denies it.

Michael pushes Adam's soul to the far recesses of his mind, and Adam retreats, not hissing and spitting like Michael expected him too, not yelling for his wife's safety like John had, but brimming with cold fury and determination. Michael thinks nothing of it, and flexes his fingers testing out this new improvised true vessel.

(The lack of any reaction should be a sign of things to come, a sign that maybe Raphael or him may have broken something essential in Adam, but Michael is too focused on bringing about Paradise, to realise it.)

xxx

It starts with small things. Things not really worth bothering about when the bigger picture is much more important than trivial matters. Like how Michael needs to focus more grace than he should to use Adam's body. That makes sense. Adam is not really his true vessel, and while he isn't a completely imperfect fit, he's not a _perfect_one either. Michael had the same problems during the short stint when he used John.

But then there's the ever obvious presence of Adam still in there. The boy does nothing – well not always, but he makes his presence known. It's unnerving because in the years he's lived and the temporary vessels he's taken, no soul had such a strong presence once he took over. Most of them simply slept inside him. But Adam is wide awake, and there, _waiting_ for something, even if it means risking burning out his soul bit by bit on Michael's grace.

Once, while he's busy searching for Lucifer to keep tabs on his brother's whereabouts, Michael realises just what the boy is trying to do. Adam isn't simply lurking, he's filling the gaps of himself where Michael's grace can't reach, systematically trying to take back control of his body. And he's _succeeding_.

Normal humans shouldn't be able to even do that. Their will isn't strong enough.

(In two days, Michael will learn that he's wrong, and humans are perfectly capable of taking back control when Sam Winchester does it, but for now he tries to push Adam back. Adam retreats, soul burning out, but with a sort of smugness that tells Michael that this won't be the first time it happens.)

xxx

For the next two days, the presence is still there, but now Adam starts talking to him. Not threats, not taunts, but the boy casually starts throwing out these tiny hypotheticals. Most consists of what would happen if Michael lost, and Lucifer won. He goes on gleefully about exactly how Lucifer might get his revenge, what Lucifer would to if he won. To earth, heaven, the angels, and Michael, all in lovingly excruciating detail, in a voice that suggests he's simply talking about the weather.

xxx

Castiel molotovs him with holy fire. Through the haze of that white hot, Michael feels Adam bury fingers into his grace and claw at it, cackling all the time. The pain is excruciating in it's own, but Adam takes the liberty to actually increase it.

xxx

Nothing, _nothing_ compares to hell. Lucifer is livid at being trapped here for all eternity again and he doesn't hesitate to show it. There is no rhyme or reason to the pain Lucifer causes. But Adam? Adam is a whole different thing.

He isn't a hunter like his brothers, but he has enough of John in him, and the make up of a scientist to be dangerous in his own way. Adam is systematic, cold, clinical, and most notably observant. The boy is furious at becoming collateral, but his method of revenge is different. He buries himself in Michael's grace, using the archangel as a shield to keep his own soul safe from Lucifer's wrath. It works more often than it doesn't. And when Lucifer tires out, and gives them a momentary reprieve, Adam digs his fingers into the wounds, before they can heal. He tears out more grace, not chunks but enough of it to hurt, and whispers _get me out_.

xxx

It's when Sam leaves, that Adam gets truly malevolent.

Adam without hope of ever getting out, Adam gone mad from his stay here and the injuries Lucifer has managed inflicted on his soul even through his best efforts to avoid them; Adam with nothing to lose any more is truly a force to be reckoned with. He takes over, like a parasite enough to have control to taunt Lucifer, but leaving enough of Michael in control so that he feels the icy burn of hell tainted grace ripping into him.

And when he lies there bleeding out broken grace, Adam's soul curls around him like a human lover would. It leaves Michael feeling colder than Lucifer's grace.

(Michael breathes in sulphur through Adam's nose. He doesn't realise it's Adam's soul that reeks of it. Has reeked of it for a long time now. Perhaps even _before_ they fell into hell.)

xxx

Some time later in the future – Michael can't tell how long, having experienced time in the cage through Adam's human form and the pain and torture has disoriented him – Adam suggests those hypothethicals again. He suggests new ones too. Something about ripping Michael's wings off, bit by bit, feather by feather, as he caresses them almost lovingly. He talks about using Michael's own grace on him, as he curls around Michael's remaining fractured grace. His voice is calm, and curious, as he says it, but there is almost a childish gleeful undertone to it. A child breaking a doll just because he can.

This has long stopped being about survival for him. It's stopped being anything. The human boy called Adam is long far gone, broken from the day he said yes, _dead_. Now he's simply a presence, a _shade_ made up of strong emotions that Adam had for Michael, doing this for _fun_, because he _can_.

(Michael realises then, that he's created his first demon unknowingly. And it decided to break him.)


End file.
